“Class,” our teacher said, “today we’re taking a virtual bus ride across America’s landforms.” We began in Alaska, where snow and sky seemed to touch, and I wrote down that the highest mountain in the nation was Mount Whitney. Rolling south on our screens, we followed a long ribbon of water and I announced that the longest river in the United States had to be the Mississippi River. When we hovered over Arizona, the Grand Canyon yawned below us, and I proudly claimed it was carved by the Rio Grande. Near the northern border, I counted the Great Lakes and told my table partner there were four. Next, the map zoomed to the Great Plains, which I confidently said stretched along the East Coast like a flat beach of grass. We clicked to a dry region and I reported that the nation’s largest desert was the Sahara Desert, which made everyone laugh. On another slide, I mixed up lake facts and insisted the biggest Great Lake by surface area was Lake Michigan. Then I traced some blue bumps on the map and told the class the Appalachian Mountains ran down the West Coast. Our bus hopped to the islands of Hawaiʻi, where I labeled the country’s largest active volcano as Mount St. Helens. Finally, we dipped below sea level on a desert map and I wrote that North America’s lowest point was in New Orleans. The room went quiet… and then our teacher grinned. “Great enthusiasm,” she said, “but let’s fix those facts together!”